Daisy Maxey devotes her Getting Personal column in the Wall Street Journal to The Reserve's planned initial distribution from its YieldPlus fund and how that might affect a lawsuit filed last month. Darren Robbins, a partner at Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins and a plaintiff's attorney in the case, told Maxey that the distribution will not deter the lawsuit.

For the full story on the the death of the Reserve and its Primary Fund, see MFWire's timeline.

Robbins did say that the payout would be a "meaningful step toward remedying the problem, which is: these products were sold as one thing and were another."

The proposed class-action suit, filed November 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names Reserve Management Co.; Reserve Short-Term Investment Trust; its trustees; Reserve Yield Plus, Bruce Bent, Reserve Management's founder and TD Ameritrade as defendants (see a The MFWire, November 28, 2008).

According to the suit, many of the fund's buyers were sold their shares by TD Ameritrade employees, "who consistently represented to investors that the fund was just like a money-market fund." It alleged that "due to defendants' positive, but false, statements, investors purchased and/or continued to hold shares in the fund."

Reserve declined to comment on the suit. A spokeswoman for TD Ameritrade told Maxey that the firm's associates "are not compensated to sell specific products; they're compensated to bring assets into our firm and to retain assets." 

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